Finding Direction: Stella's Path to Reinvention
“I felt I was in a grey area.” That’s how Stella Mwangi describes the point she was at before joining Humans in the Loop’s Career Counseling program – not stuck, exactly, but suspended, unsure which direction to move in next.
Stella is a full-time freelance digital marketer based in Nairobi, with a degree in communication and media and years of experience as a copywriter. On paper, she was established. In practice, she sensed the ground shifting beneath her. AI was reshaping the kind of writing work she’d built her career on, and she knew that offering the same services wouldn’t be enough to keep growing. The trouble was, she didn’t know what came next. “I’ve been writing for so long that I didn’t know what else I was supposed to be doing,” she says. She couldn’t even bring herself to update her CV, because she didn’t know what story it was supposed to tell anymore.
Working with Eid, HITL’s Social Mediator, Stella didn’t just get her CV rewritten, she got help thinking through a repositioning she hadn’t been able to name on her own. Together, they identified a path forward: shifting from copywriter to communication strategist, a move that let her build on everything she already knew while stepping into ground less likely to be swallowed by automation. “He made me understand that I might take an area that is so small and then it will also be taken over by AI,” she says, “so I needed to think bigger.”
Even her LinkedIn profile, which she’d already built up through her own research, got something valuable out of the process, not an overhaul, but validation. “Nobody had held my hand and told me this is what you’re supposed to do,” she says. “It made me feel good about myself and more confident.”
For Stella, the turning point wasn’t a single piece of advice, it was the moment the fog lifted. “There’s no loudness anymore,” she says of finding her pivot. “I don’t feel lost, I don’t feel like I’m walking through the forest. I now know I have a direction.” She was also pointed toward a scholarship opportunity on Coursera, something she hadn’t realized existed.
Asked to sum up the program in a sentence, she doesn’t hesitate: “Validating – it’s an eye-opener.” For a freelancer with no manager to check in or push her forward, she says the experience felt less like a service and more like a partnership. “No judgment, just encouragement and direction.”
Stella’s message to anyone considering the program is simple: career stage doesn’t matter. “Whether you’re a beginner, or like me you’ve been at it for years and years, if you feel you need advice, you need someone to guide you towards your next big thing, definitely take the program.” What stayed with her most wasn’t a fix to a specific problem, but a new way of approaching her career. Instead of feeling trapped by changes in her industry, she now sees change as something she can navigate with purpose. “No matter where I am in my career path, I can always go higher, and there are people out there who are willing to help me.”
